Welcome to the new world order, and say "buh-bye" to the record companies. RadioHead has proven that money can be made releasing music in a "pay what you want to" format on the internet, and I think that this is the future of music.
More and more web savy artist are turning away from the record companies and the dream of the "major label recording contract" is no longer the big shiny thing that it once was. All the tools are in place for bands to record and market themselves on the internet, and with some imaginative marketing savvy, anyone can get their music heard.
I grew up in Vancouver at the tail end of the 60's and through the 70's and one of the things I loved about going downtown as a kid was listening to the Buskers. These guys would play their music to the wind in hopes that some of the people listening would drop a few pennies in the hat. They never yelled or tried to sue the people that stood there listening without donating, instead choosing to politely thank the people that did . A lot of the greatest artist today started as buskers, and I think that the "Busker" mentality can be used on the internet.
Here is the way I would do it. Using a host like Bandzoogle.com, I would set up a site for my band and upload some music to it. Bandzoogle provides a site wide music player, so that people perusing your site can listen to your music as they go. Now say this person likes your song and decides to purchase it. You sell it for 99 cents, and the customer happily loads it on to their computer, burns it on to cd, loads it on to their mp3 player, and best of all, shares it with their buddies. This happens all the time because people tend to tell other people about good music. I once sent a song by the Arrogant Worms, a great Canadian band, to a friend in California, who had never heard of them. She liked them so much she went to the web site and purchased a few of the albums. (Live Bait is the best in case you were wondering) And I'm sure she is happily sharing them with her friends. which in turn will drive more people to their site out of curiosity.
When you upload your mp3's to your site, tag them with your website address in the title. For example, I admin a website called "littlehead.ca" (no music yet, but they are working on it) Now when they upload the tunes I tag them as "song title by littlehead @ littlehead.ca" in most players, this would scroll as the song is playing. People who were given this song, or downloaded it from a p2p network would see this, hopefully get curious, and visit the site.
I would put a blurb on your main page saying something like "Hi there music lovers, did you get this song for free? No worries mate! Go ahead and share with your friends, we don't mind at all. All we ask as that you at least have a look at our donation page"
Then on the donation page I would have a PayPal donation button and a blurb along the lines of "Thanks for stopping by. If you like our music and would like to help us continue making it, please feel free to donate whatever you can to help out some starving musicians." or something along those lines.
This may seem like a hopelessly romantic way to look at things but I like to think that people, especially music lovers, are basically honest and good. So I think that this idea will work. and if a million people hit the website in a year, and 10% of those people purchase a song and then 10% of the people they share it with stop by and check out the site and 10% of them donate a few cents, well then by golly you end up with....um......several dollars!
Cheers! and don't forget to donate!
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